1 and 01:Label President

TOMORROW RECORDINGS

Education

Buckwheat was becoming a favorite on the national circuit, and his music caught the attention of New York-based writer Ted Fox.Now Buckwheat's manager, Fox was initially a big fan.
"Buck was always my favorite and I'd try to see him whenever I could," says Fox, who first saw the group play at the old Tramp's on 15th Street in Manhattan.
Fox had written a little about zydeco music and the friendship that was struck between the two men led to the first major-label release in the history of zydeco music.

It was on a cross-country flight that Fox first mentioned Buckwheat to Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records.

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A few weeks later, Fox made him a "best of Buckwheat" compilation.

The tape cataloged some of Buck's landmark tunes, and it became a big hit at Island's Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas.
Soon thereafter, Blackwell called Fox, wanting to sign Buckwheat to a multi-record deal.

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"He's really an under-discovered musical genius," Fox says of Buckwheat.
Fox himself is not a musician or an engineer, but he has been instrumental in keeping Buckwheat's career on a upward trajectory.
He's been in the booth for the band's recordings of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix tunes, and he's come up with suggestions for original material as well.
"I just felt that my role as producer was to introduce new ideas and to encourage Buckwheat in what he was doing," he says.

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Ted Fox delivered play-by-play of Irish football and men's basketball for three years as a student.He wrote a weekly sports column for the Notre Dame student newspaper for over three years and has been a contributing writer to "The Wolverine", the official publication of University of Michigan athletics.Ted recently finished working in production at ESPN and is currently pursuing an on-air and writing career.

Ted Fox, who went from listener to fan to one of Buckwheat's producers, put it this way: "I was never a big fan of sing-alongs at live shows and when I first started working with Buckwheat Zydeco, it made me uncomfortable when Buck asked the crowd to sing along.